Italy was first European country to have a major outbreak of COVID-19.
Image: REUTERS/Guglielmo Mangiapane

via World Economic Forum

• COVID-19 was circulating in Italy from September 2019, according to a study by the Italian National Cancer Institute.
• Italy’s first official COVID-19 case was detected on February 21st.
• The new study which re-examined samples from a lung cancer screening trial between September 2019 and March 2020, suggests otherwise.
• It showed that of the 959 healthy volunteers enrolled in the trial, 11% had developed coronavirus antibodies well before February.
• A study by the University of Siena also supports this theory.

The new coronavirus was circulating in Italy since September 2019, a study by the National Cancer Institute (INT) of the Italian city of Milan shows, signaling that COVID-19 might have spread beyond China earlier than previously thought.

The World Health Organization has said the new coronavirus and COVID-19, the respiratory disease it causes, were unknown before the outbreak was first reported in Wuhan, in central China, in December.

Italy’s first COVID-19 patient was detected on Feb. 21 in a little town near Milan, in the northern region of Lombardy.

But the Italian researchers’ findings, published by the INT’s scientific magazine Tumori Journal, show that 11,6% of 959 healthy volunteers enrolled in a lung cancer screening trial between September 2019 and March 2020, had developed coronavirus antibodies well before February.

A further specific SARS-CoV-2 antibodies test was carried out by the University of Siena for the same research titled “Unexpected detection of SARS-CoV-2 antibodies in the pre-pandemic period in Italy”.

It showed that four cases dated back to the first week of October were also positive for antibodies neutralizing the virus, meaning they had got infected in September, Giovanni Apolone, a co-author of the study, told Reuters.

“This is the main finding: people with no symptoms not only were positive after the serological tests but had also antibodies able to kill the virus,” Apolone said.

“It means that the new coronavirus can circulate among the population for long and with a low rate of lethality not because it is disappearing but only to surge again,” he added.

Italian researchers told Reuters in March that they reported a higher than usual number of cases of severe pneumonia and flu in Lombardy in the last quarter of 2019 in a sign that the new coronavirus might have circulated earlier than previously thought.

Reporting by Giselda Vagnoni; editing by Emelia Sithole-Matarise

In a press conference on Thursday morning, the Swedish government announced plans to remove the majority of restrictions against Covid-19 on February 9th, the Local.se reported.

Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson, Health Minister Lena Hallengren and the Director General of the Public Health Agency, Karin Tegmark Wisell, announced that almost all restrictions will be removed on February 9th, and that those working from home should prepare to return to work.

Health Minister Lena Hallengren, Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson and Director General of the Public Health Agency Karin Tegmark Wisell at Thursday’s press conference. Photo: Marko Säävälä/TT

“The pandemic is not over, but is entering a completely new phase,” said Andersson. “We are nearing the point for Sweden to open up again.”

The government explained that the decision to open up was based on a number of factors, partly that Omicron appears to be a milder variant of the virus, and partly that the percentage of Sweden’s population who are fully vaccinated or have taken a booster dose continues to increase.

“There are multiple international studies of a milder illness, and the data we have from Sweden paints the same picture,” Andersson explained. “The rate of vaccination in Sweden has been high in recent weeks,” she continued, stating that this means that “we can open up society, at least for all who have been vaccinated”.

Almost 50 percent of over-18s in Sweden have received their third dose of the vaccine, and more than 86 percent of over-12s have received their first dose. Sweden does not recommend the Covid vaccines to children under the age of 12, unless they are particularly at risk.

Health Minister Lena Hallengren also stated that “the government is planning on removing travel restrictions introduced on December 21st for the Nordic countries”, stating that they would provide more information as soon as it was possible.

She didn’t say anything about travel restrictions for other countries. Sweden’s current entry rules for EU/EEA arrivals are currently in place until February 28th, and March 31st for people travelling from other countries.

In terms of returning to work and higher education, Hallengren stated that “in order to prevent a new wave, the return to work and school should occur successively”.

Which restrictions will be removed?

The following restrictions will be removed next week:

• Indoor events of 20-50 people must be seated, with max 8 per group and one metre between groups
• Vaccination pass needed for indoor events with more than 50 attendees
• Trade shows and markets indoors must require a vaccine pass if they have more than 50 guests, and number of guests is capped at 500, with 10 square metres per person
• Restaurants must close at 11pm, with alcohol serving ending at 10.30pm
• Groups at restaurants may consist of a maximum of eight people, with a minimum of one metre between groups
• Restaurants with conserts or other entertainment may only have seated guests
• Maximum of 20 people at private parties in hired venues
• Shops must have a maximum number of guests permitted, calculated on area with 10 square metres per person – this also applies to gyms, museums, art galleries, theme parks and swimming pools
• Long-distance public transport: all travellers must have a seat, if possible

In addition to this, special recommendations for those who have not yet been vaccinated will remain, as well as recommendations to stay home when sick, or if you suspect you may have Covid-19.

Covid-19 ‘no longer a danger to society’

The Public Health Agency also believes that Covid-19 should no longer be classified as an illness presenting a danger to society. Therefore, the agency has sent a request to the government in order to reclassify the illness.

“The government will process this request in a swift manner and will also put forward a law proposal to reclassify Covid-19,” Hallengren said, indicating that this could happen by the end of March. After the government has submitted these proposals, parliament will make the final decision on whether to approve them or not.

Sweden confirmed its highest number of daily new cases of Covid-19 last week, the highest level yet during the pandemic. There was also a clear rise in the number of Covid-linked deaths and intensive care admissions last month, albeit not as much as during previous waves.

With over 16,000 fatalities so far, Sweden’s death toll is in line with the European average, but is far higher than those of neighbouring Norway, Finland and Denmark.

Denmark on Tuesday became the first European Union country to lift most of its domestic Covid-19 restrictions, followed later in the day by Norway.

via ZeroHedge

Europe can hope for a “long period of tranquility,” Dr. Hans Kluge says

During a virtual press briefing conducted by the World Health Organization (WHO) on Thursday, Dr. Hans Kluge, regional director for Europe, announced that the continent could be entering a “long period of tranquility” and security in the global Covid-19 pandemic.

Talking to the reporters, he said Europe had the “unique opportunity to take control of transmission” due to three factors: high vaccination and natural immunity rates among European citizens, favorable seasonal conditions as winter approaches its end, and the lower severity of the Omicron variant.

“This period of higher protection should be seen as a ‘ceasefire’ that could bring us enduring peace,” he said in the video.

Despite the fact that Covid-19 cases have reached their highest since the start of the pandemic due to the more contagious nature of the Omicron variant, Covid death rates and intensive care admissions are starting to stabilize, according to Dr. Kluge.

He urged the European authorities to continue their vaccination policies, focus on protecting the most vulnerable groups, promote self-defensive behavior, and increase surveillance to detect new variants of Covid-19.

“I believe that it is possible to respond to new variants that will inevitably emerge without reinstalling the kind of disruptive measures we needed before,” he noted.

The regional director also addressed the necessity of increasing “vaccine sharing across borders” in order to fight the pandemic worldwide.

The WHO virtual press conference was conducted amid multiple European nations deciding to end or significantly soften their Covid-19 restrictions. Denmark, Ireland, Norway, France, and Sweden have already decided to relax restrictive measures in the coming weeks, with Finland, Italy and Switzerland expecting to conduct government discussions on the matter in the coming days.

According to WHO statistics, Europe has seen more than 11,800,000 Covid-19 cases and more than 22,000 deaths in the last seven days.

Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times,

Lawmakers in Iowa’s state Legislature have advanced a bill that would allow the use of ivermectin for critically sick COVID-19 patients.

Ivermectin has been used for decades to treat parasitic worms in humans, but during the COVID-19 pandemic, some patients and doctors have attested that the drug is effective in relieving symptoms.

The Iowa bill stipulates that COVID-19 patients who are on ventilators should have the ability to use ivermectin. Specifically, it expands the state’s “right to try” law, which allows terminally ill patients to access medicines that have passed under the first phase of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s trials.

“I completely support it. I think that we should give patients the right to try,” said Rep. Ann Meyer, a Republican and one of the bill’s cosponsors, told the Des Moines Register in late January.

Rep. Lee Hein, also a Republican, said he sponsored the measure after hearing that two families of critically ill COVID-19 patients had sought ivermectin but hospital policies prevented them from obtaining the medication. Both patients died of COVID-19, he said.

“I don’t know whether any of these drugs work, but I think at that late stage in the game, once you’re on a ventilator, families ought to have at least a glimmer of hope to try something,” Hein told Radio Iowa.

The FDA’s website says that its “currently available data” suggests that the medication isn’t effective at treating or preventing COVID-19. However, the agency courted controversy last year when it issued a Twitter post that suggested the drug is only used for “deworming” horses and other livestock, although it has long authorized ivermectin tablets as a treatment for worms in humans.

The FDA and other agencies, meanwhile, have warned against people taking livestock-grade ivermectin, which doesn’t require a prescription, amid reports of increases in people being admitted to hospitals after taking the livestock version of the drug.

The drug gained more attention after podcaster Joe Rogan confirmed that he took human-grade ivermectin in a bid to curb his COVID-19 symptoms. Ivermectin is also being used across Latin America for COVID-19, including in Peru, Guatemala, Bolivia, and other countries.

In December of last year, the family of an Illinois man, Sun Ng, who developed severe COVID-19 symptoms and was near death, said he recovered after taking ivermectin. It came after a court ordered the hospital to administer the drug to Ng, the family’s attorney told The Epoch Times at the time.

Rep. Meyer, who is a also nurse, said that ivermectin has “been around” for “many years.” The bill, she told Radio Iowa, would allow “off-label” use of the drug for COVID-19 patients who are on life support in hospitals.

Republicans advanced the measure through a subcommittee meeting on Jan. 26.

One Democrat on the subcommittee, Rep. Mary Mascher, voted against advancing the bill.

“There’s a lot of folks in the room who are medical folks,” Mascher said during last week’s hearing. “And I have heard no one in support of the bill.”

via ZeroHedge

A Japanese pharmaceutical company, Kowa Co, said on Monday that the drug ivermectin has an “antiviral effect” against Omicron and other Covid-19 variants.

The finding was made with Tokyo’s Kitasato University on a joint non-clinical research project, which has been testing the drug as a potential treatment for the disease, according to Reuters.

Kowa says that ivermectin showed the “same antiviral effect” on all “mutant strains,” including Alpha, Delta and Omicron. The company also noted that ivermectin suppresses invasion of the virus and inhibits its replication.

“[Ivermectin] is expected to be applied as a therapeutic drug (tablet) for all new coronavirus infectious diseases,” reads the report.

Of note, Reuters changed their original headline from “effective” against Omicron to having an “antiviral effect,” and corrected a statement that the finding occurred during “Phase III clinical trials.”

Ivermectin is at the heart of an ongoing ‘medical misinformation’ campaign surrounding podcaster Joe Rogan and several expert guests who have advocated for the use of the anti-parasitic drug as an early treatment option for Covid-19 patients. Rogan himself used ivermectin as part of a cocktail of treatments when he contracted Covid-19.

Controversy over free speech erupted last week after singers Neil Young and Joni Mitchell demanded that Spotify remove their music catalog unless Rogan was silenced.

Rogan responded to the drama on in a Monday Instagram video, in which he said he only seeks to have conversations on his podcast with people who have “differing opinions,” and that he isn’t “trying to promote misinformation.”

He noted that he’s booked experts from all sides, including CNN‘s chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta, Dr. Michael Osterholm, who is a member of President Joe Biden’s COVID-19 advisory board, and Dr. Peter Hotez from Baylor College of Medicine.

Rogan also pointed out that many previously-verboten Covid claims have turned out to be true.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Joe Rogan (@joerogan)

According to ivmmeta.com, Ivermectin showed an average 64% improvement as an early treatment, a 39% improvement as a late treatment and an 83% improvement as a prophylaxis, across 77 studies.

As The Epoch Times notes;

Ivermectin has been used by the World Health Organization for over 30 years to treat parasitic infections. Volunteers have distributed the drug in African countries where it has been found to be extremely effective, said the Kowa report.

However, the treatment has been mired in controversy during recent times as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has not approved the use of ivermectin as a treatment for COVID-19, even though the drug is used in humans to treat a variety of conditions.

The FDA has refused to respond to a Freedom of Information Act request (FOIA) asking for details about any reports of side effects related to the use of ivermectin in treating COVID-19 while publicly denouncing its usage.

The federal government pays hospitals across the country to treat COVID-19 patients, but the payment is tied to approved methods, and ivermectin is not part of the protocol.

However, families desperate to save their loved ones are resorting to secretly sneaking the drug into hospitals as a last-ditch effort that often ends up helping the infected person recover.

All or part of 22 countries around the globe have approved the use of ivermectin in the treatment of COVID-19, based on multiple studies. Japan has not yet approved ivermectin for the treatment of COVID-19.

A bill has been presented to make New Hampshire the first state in the country to make ivermectin part of the approved COVID-19 treatments and offer it as an over-the-counter medication.

Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Dr. Scott Gottlieb, former director of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and current board member at Pfizer, said that declining COVID-19 cases should signal to policymakers that it is time to lift more pandemic-related restrictions.

“I think certainly on the east coast where you see cases declining dramatically we need to be willing to lean in and do that very soon I think as conditions improve we have to be willing to relax some of these measures with the same speed that we put them in place,” he told “The Squawk Box” in a Monday interview when asked about whether maskmandates should be dropped.

Scott Gottlieb testifies during a Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington on April 5, 2017. (Zach Gibson/Getty Images)

Gottlieb said that “a lot of the acrimony” in the United States stems from a lack of “clear goalposts” about when some of the measures will end.

The former FDA commissioner also cited the Connecticut government’s recent decision to rescind vaccine mandates for state workers as a policy that other policymakers should adopt in the near future as COVID-19 cases decline nationwide.

“The only way to get compliance from people and get accommodation [is] if we demonstrate the ability to withdraw these [mandates] in the same manner in which we put them in,” Gottlieb added.

The call for COVID-19 restrictions to be dropped comes as the overall infection rate in the United States has sharply declined in recent days. Data from the Johns Hopkins-run Our World in Data shows that 4,110 out of every one million Americans recorded infections on Jan. 10, but that rate was 2,643 as late as Friday and dropped to 615 per one million as of Sunday.

Outside the United States, more and more European countries have moved to rescind certain COVID-19-related rules, including vaccine passports and mask mandates. For example, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson said that starting Jan. 27, people in England won’t have to wear masks in public or show proof that they’ve been vaccinated to enter some venues.

But on Monday, World Health Organization’s (WHO) director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, warned that more COVID-19 variants may emerge and alleged that it’s dangerous to assume Omicron is the last one or that “we are in the endgame.”

“There are different scenarios for how the pandemic could play out and how the acute phase could end. But it’s dangerous to assume that omicron will be the last variant or that we are in the endgame,” Tedros told a WHO board meeting. “On the contrary, globally, the conditions are ideal for more variants to emerge.” He didn’t provide evidence or data to back up his claim.

The judge ruled the governor lacks the authority to require those aged two and above to mask up in public.

New York Governor Kathy Hochul’s order for everyone to wear masks in public was shut down by a New York State Supreme Court judge, who ruled that such decisions must be passed by lawmakers instead.

Judge Thomas Rademaker ruled on Monday that the New York State Legislature was the only body with sufficient power to pass the mandate, which would force every New Yorker over the age of two to wear a face mask in public places, including schools.

“There can be no question that every person in this State wishes, wants and prays that this era of COVID ends soon and they will surely do their part to see that is accomplished,” the judge noted. “However, enacting any laws to this end is entrusted solely to the State Legislature.”

Judge Rademaker said that “while the intentions” of Governor Hochul and New York Health Commissioner Mary T. Bassett “appear to be well aimed squarely at doing what they believe is right to protect the citizens of New York State,” the two officials “must take their case to the State Legislature.”

“To allow such agency law making would result in laws being changed at the whim of every new Commissioner who could then be said to be beholden to their appointer,” Judge Rademaker noted. “But also it would surely result in a lack of representative government wherein only a select few appointees of the Governor make the laws.”

This is the very antithesis of constitutionally established representative government

Governor Hochul said she would fight to overturn the court’s decision instead of taking the mandate to the State Legislature as advised.

“My responsibility as Governor is to protect New Yorkers throughout this public health crisis, and these measures help prevent the spread of COVID-19 and save lives. We strongly disagree with this ruling, and we are pursuing every option to reverse this immediately,” she said in a statement.

via unicef

School closures have led to a loss of basic math and literacy skills and caused an array of mental health issues, the United Nations Children’s Fund said

The damage to children’s education during the Covid-19 pandemic is hard to offset, with many young people losing out on “basic numeracy and literacy skills” due to school closures, UNICEF said.

“Quite simply, we are looking at a nearly insurmountable scale of loss to children’s schooling,” said UNICEF Chief of Education Robert Jenkins in a statement on Monday.

“While the disruptions to learning must end, just reopening schools is not enough. Students need intensive support to recover lost education,” Jenkins claimed, adding that schools “must also go beyond places of learning to rebuild children’s mental and physical health, social development and nutrition.”

UNICEF claimed children have “lost basic numeracy and literacy skills”which they “would have acquired if they had been in the classroom,” while younger children are thought to be the most affected by a lack of in-person schooling.

The number of 10-year-olds in low- and middle-income countries who are unable to read or write rose by a whopping 17%, from 53% to 70%.

The damage is also thought to be universal, affecting children from Ethiopia and South Africa to Brazil and the United States.

UNICEF further warned that the closure of schools during the pandemic “impacted children’s mental health, reduced their access to a regular source of nutrition, and increased their risk of abuse.”

Over 370 million students missed out on school meals due to closures, which provided the only nutritious food to many impoverished children, while “high rates of anxiety and depression” have been recorded among children since the beginning of the pandemic in 2020 – with females most affected.

Op-ed authored by Harvey Risch, Paul E. Alexander and Jay Bhattacharya via The Epoch Times via Brownstone Institute

The time has come to terminate the pandemic state of emergency. It’s time to end the controls, the closures, the restrictions, the plexiglass, the stickers, the exhortations, the panic-mongering, the distancing announcements, the ubiquitous commercials, the forced masking, the vaccine mandates.

A voter stands on a social distance marker outside the Washington County Election Center in Hagerstown, Md., on Oct. 26, 2020, for the first day of in-person early voting. (Colleen McGrath/The Herald-Mail via AP)`

We don’t mean that the virus is gone—Omicron is still spreading wildly, and the virus may circulate forever. But with a normal focus on protecting the vulnerable, we can treat the virus as a medical rather than a social matter and manage it in ordinary ways. A declared emergency needs continuous justification, and that’s now lacking.

Over the last six weeks in the United States, the Delta variant strain—the most recent aggressive version of the infection—has according to the CDC been declining in both the proportion of infections (60 percent on Dec. 18 to 0.5 percent on Jan. 15) and the number of daily infected people (95,000 to 2,100). During the next two weeks, Delta will decline to the point that it essentially disappears like the strains before it.

Omicron is mild enough that most people, even many high-risk people, can adequately cope with the infection. Omicron infection is no more severe than seasonal flu, and generally less so. A large portion of the vulnerable population in the developed world is already vaccinated and protected against severe disease. We have learned much about the utility of inexpensive supplements like Vitamin D to reduce disease risk, and there’s a host of good therapeutics available to prevent hospitalization and death should a vulnerable patient become infected. And for younger people, the risk of severe disease—already low before Omicron—is minuscule.

Even in places with strict lockdown measures, there are hundreds of thousands of newly registered Omicron cases daily and countless unregistered positives from home testing. Measures like mandatory masking and distancing have had negligible or at most small effects on transmission. Large-scale population quarantines only delay the inevitable. Vaccination and boosters have not halted Omicron disease spread; heavily vaccinated nations like Israel and Australia have more daily cases per capita than any place on earth at the moment. This wave will run its course despite all of the emergency measures.

Until Omicron, recovery from COVID provided substantial protection against subsequent infection. While the Omicron variant can reinfect patients recovered from infection by previous strains, such reinfection tends to produce mild disease. Future variants, whether evolved from Omicron or not, are unlikely to evade the immunity provided by Omicron infection for a long while. With the universal spread of Omicron worldwide, new strains will likely have more difficulty finding a hospitable environment because of the protection provided to the population by Omicron’s widespread natural immunity.

It’s true that—despite emergency measures—hospitalization counts and COVID-associated mortality have risen. Since mortality tends to trail symptomatic infection by about 3–4 weeks, we’re still seeing the Delta strain’s remaining effects and the waning of vaccine immunity against serious outcomes at 6–8 months after vaccination. These cases should decline over time as Delta finally says goodbye. It’s too late to alter their course with lockdowns (if that were ever possible).

Given that Omicron, with its mild infection, is running its course to the end, there’s no justification for maintaining emergency status. The lockdowns, personnel firings, and shortages and school disruptions have done at least as much damage to the population’s health and welfare as the virus.

The state of emergency isn’t justified now, and it can’t be justified by fears of a hypothetical recurrence of some more severe infection at some unknown point in the future. If such a severe new variant were to occur—and it seems unlikely from Omicron—then that would be the time to discuss a declaration of emergency.

Americans have sacrificed enough of their human rights and of their livelihoods for two years in the service of protecting the general public health. Omicron is circulating but it’s not an emergency. The emergency is over. The current emergency declaration must be canceled. It’s time.